Care to Flip Virtual Burgers?

My Virtual Summer Job - Alexandra Alter, The Wall Street Journal

While his friends scramble for jobs flipping burgers or bagging groceries this summer, 18-year-old Mike Everest will be working as a trader in the fantasy Web world of Entropia Universe, buying and selling virtual animal skins and weapons. His goods exist only online, but his earnings are real. In the past four years, he's made $35,000.

Mr. Everest, of Durango, Colo., is among a new breed of young entrepreneurs seeking their fortune online in imaginary worlds. As the pool of traditional summer jobs shrinks, tech-savvy young gamers are honing their computer skills to capitalize on growing demand for virtual goods and services. Some work as fashion designers, architects and real-estate developers in Second Life, a fantasy world populated by digital representations of real people. These so-called avatars shop in malls, buy property, hang out with friends or sit "home" watching TV, all manipulated by their real-life counterparts with computer key strokes and a mouse.

"It's an incredible environment for young entrepreneurs," says Claudia L'Amoreaux, of Linden Lab. "The ones who are really successful at it are beginning to make that their main work."

Virtual Gap: Who Will Make Our Real Homes and Clothes? - Posted by Wendy Bounds   

You can’t blame them. The money is sweet: $600 to $800 a month for one designer of online fairy wings and wizard robes. Plus sitting in air-conditioning with a laptop sure beats sweating bullets over a deep-fat fryer.

Yet as the next generation of builders, metalsmiths, designers and architects increasingly use pixels instead of penny nails and pencils to create, will there be enough talented craftsmen and women to put solid roofs over our heads and well-made clothes on our backs?  Do we value that kind of bricks-and-mortar work properly anymore?

Back on planet earth, a Web site launched this month called housingdownturn.org. Its mission: to provide a resource for entrepreneurs in the real housing market to aid their marketing efforts. Filled with marketing tips and online-advertising opportunities, it’s billed as a way to kickstart the struggling industry.

Then there’s 17-year-old Mike Mikula, who isn’t struggling at all as a virtual architect in the Teen Second Life world. His projected summer income: $4,000 a month. That’s about what my plumber got paid over the course of a 300-square-foot kitchen renovation.

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I read both articles this morning while down feathers deep in another virtual world literature review.  This time I'm studying the national security implications of virtual worlds, and perhaps the largest global theme I've read up on is the blurring of virtual and real economics.

Indeed, Second Life generate the first virtual millionaire several years ago.  That is, her virtual property is worth millions in real US dollars.

I'm not sure what to think... part of me wants to tell these kids to get out and find a real job that generates tangible products, but the other part--the pure capitalist--is saying, "go for it!"  From my understanding it's not easy work, and those who make a living in virtual worlds put in long hours just like the rest of us real world stiffs.

Personally, I don't know how I'd feel about making money off a three dimensional product that exists as binary code on some random server.  All it takes is for someone to pull the plug and all that virtual property is gone in an instant.

Speaking of which, the idea that virtual property is worth real money (notably property that can be infinitely replicated) is an awkward concept.  But to paraphrase Dr. Ed Castronova, once users assign value to a virtual object it takes on real value.

And some states are picking up on the concept, which is the kind of information I'm studying.

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